


Darkness in the Mirror

by irhinoceri



Series: We Few Against The Wind [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Cannibalistic Thoughts, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multiple Wardens (Dragon Age), Nightmares, Non-Endgame Alistair/Mahariel, Non-Endgame Morrigan/Cousland, POV Mahariel (Dragon Age), Pre-Relationship Alistair/Morrigan, Suicidal Thoughts, past mahariel/tamlen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27835888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irhinoceri/pseuds/irhinoceri
Summary: Lythra Mahariel, still grieving the loss of Tamlen, joins the Wardens and struggles to come to terms with the new realities of her life post-conscription and post-Ostagar.
Relationships: Female Mahariel & Alistair (Dragon Age), Female Mahariel & Morrigan (Dragon Age), Female Mahariel/Tamlen (Dragon Age)
Series: We Few Against The Wind [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037403
Kudos: 5





	Darkness in the Mirror

Lythra Mahariel wanted to die.

She had never felt that way before. All her life had been building towards a happy future.

There was tragedy in her past. But, she could barely remember her parents, who had died and left her an orphan. She only knew the love and care of Ashalla as a child.

Tamlen had always been there, a friend in childhood, and as they grew towards adulthood, she knew in her heart he would be her life-mate, that they would be hunters together forever. Bonded.

But that future, which had seemed so solid and clear, was shattered in one day, as surely as the glass of that cursed mirror was shattered by Duncan’s blade.

The Grey Warden denied her death, denied her the right to stay with her clan, and forced her into a world she did not care to save. He did this with Keeper Marethari’s blessing and recognition. Everything she had known, everyone she had cared about, gone in one day.

Better to die and be mourned alongside Tamlen. Better that their spirits could be together in the Beyond. Better to let the darkspawn devour her, too.

She would replay that day over in her head countless times. It plagued her nightmares.

When she dreamed, she would go back to the forest, deep in the Brecilian woods, and Tamlen would be at her side again.

They killed the trio of shems they found in the forest, and she dreamt those deaths over and over again.

At the time she had felt confident, empowered, alive. She was emboldened by the smile Tamlen flashed her when she declared the shems could not be left to run free, could not be allowed to spread mischief and rumors about the clan among their people. If they lived they would bring more shemlen back with them, it was their way.

They dispatched the shems with quick precision.

In her nightmares the killings were drawn out, not like they had been in reality. The shems screamed and writhed on the ground, arrows in their backs, but they would not die. She shot bolt after bolt into their bodies and they screamed terrible inhuman shrieks, but they would not die. Then she would be alone, looking everywhere for Tamlen. But he was gone.

She did not regret killing the shems. She hadn’t even paused to give them a second thought, at the time. They were nothing to her. She had walked over their bodies on her way to investigate the cave they spoke of, and it was only in nightmares that they writhed and moaned and cried for mercy. They were not human any longer, but twisted into ghouls, into living corpses, and they could not die.

She would come awake from nightmares to find herself in the Warden camp. And she would remember that Tamlen was dead, eaten by darkspawn, or so Duncan had said. She could not stop thinking about this gruesome end, especially after Ostagar and the carnage she witnessed there.

She dreamed of eating the shemlen in the forest. They lived still but she gobbled up their flesh and it tasted sweet. Their beating hearts pumped blood into her mouth. She invited Tamlen to join her at this feast, but he was not there. She looked down at her own hands and saw that they were scabbed and rotting, blighted claws, coated in black bile and crusted brown blood, and when she touched her face she felt the scaly hide of a demon.

When she woke from that version of the nightmare the first time she stumbled to the edge of camp and lost the meager rations she had eaten for dinner. When she crawled back to her bedroll, Alistair was awake and watching her, and asked her the obvious, “Bad nightmare, huh?”

He was the last person in the world she wanted to confide in.

She did not just dream of the shems in the forest. She dreamt of the mirror in the ruins, guarded by its shambling horrors, skeletons in armor holding weapons in bones that should not have held together.

She had ignored the ill omen, in life. She and Tamlen had traipsed recklessly through the ruins, dispatching every enemy with ease. They were the best hunters of the clan, after all. Nothing could really hurt them. It had been a good day, full of excitement. She had wanted to be alone with Tamlen that day, had wriggled her way out of her prescribed duty at camp just so she could go ranging with him, and for a time it felt like the best decision in the world.

She had killed the shems to impress him. She didn’t really think they were a threat to the clan. They weren’t armed and they seemed desperate to get away from the scary elves. She had liked being the scary elf, and she had relished the approval in Tamlen’s voice when he said, “That suits me just fine.”

The ruins were fascinating, and the idea to go back and report their findings to the Keeper barely crossed her mind. Nothing could really hurt them, after all.

She saw darkness in the mirror, a black city unlike anything she had ever seen. The word “city” had not even made its way into her mind, at that point. She had never seen a shem city, though she’d heard about them from the elves who forsake their alienages to join the Dalish. Pol described buildings piled on top of each other, blotting out the sun, and in her minds’ eye she pictured huge aravels that did not move.

The city she saw in the mirror was indistinct, like looking further into the ruins where they already stood, but as she leaned closer, her memory ended. The last thing she recalled was Tamlen’s hand on the mirror, its dark surface rippling like the still water of a fetid pool being disturbed for the first time. Then she was looking up into the face of another shem, the one she would later know as Duncan.

Even in her feverish nightmares, she could not reclaim the memories of what had happened. She could never recall how she had left the ruins, or what had happened to Tamlen.

She dreamt of the mirror, though. In her dreams it was impossibly tall, dwarfing the trees of the forest. It rose fifty feet into the air, touching the sky, and cast its shadow over the entire clan. Shadowy figures writhed beyond the mirror’s surface, and she wondered why they had mistaken it for a mirror, at all. It was clearly a window into darkness.

Lythra could not die. She was saved by Duncan in the forest, and then by Keeper Marethari who nursed her through the blight sickness for three days. And then she survived the Joining, the Grey Warden’s deadly ritual, though the cocky shem from Denerim fell choking on the darkspawn blood beside her.

Then Alistair had chosen to bring her along on the ‘easy’ mission to light the tower beacon. She hated him for that, confused as to why he would do such a thing. She wanted to be in the thick of battle, to scream and cry for Tamlen’s death as she had not been allowed to do before, to slay as many darkspawn as she could until she was finally swallowed by the horde.

But she knew the shem boy liked her, for some reason. He had always been unfailingly friendly to her, from the first moment when Duncan had dragged her out of the forest to the time they had spent scouting in the Wilds gathering up darkspawn blood and hunting for Grey Warden relics. He was the first shem she’d ever really talked to, like a person, save for Duncan.

Out among the shems she realized that they did not find her scary. Even with her longbow, as tall as she was, her quiver of sharp arrows, and her tongue just as sharp. At least, the Grey Wardens weren’t scared of her.

The King had ordered that Alistair and one of the other wardens were to be stationed away from the battle, a safe assignment. She had no idea why the King singled out Alistair, but he was particular about that. And Duncan had given Alistair the choice of which Warden he wanted as his backup. Perversely, her new best shem friend chose her, the only warden-recruit who had openly desired death, who had spoken to him of wishing for the cold comfort of the grave, who had envied Daveth as he lay crumpled on the ground.

Finally, cruelly, she was plucked from the sweet embrace of death atop the Tower of Ishtal.

The tower assignment proved to be more difficult than imagined, and they had to fight their way through darkspawn to get to the top. But when the beacon was lit, they had a moment of reprieve. Lythra bent over, breathing heavily, her hands braced on her knees. She looked up and met Alistair’s eyes, and they both laughed suddenly. She did not expect to feel elation. Her instinct for self-preservation did not let her die, making her fight and kill instead of give herself up to the enemy, but she did not expect to feel joy to be standing victorious atop the tower, with a shem beside her.

Their victory did not last long. More darkspawn emerged from the lower levels, overrunning the floors they had cleared on their way up, battering against the doors they had sealed behind them. The tower guard and circle mage who had fought through the monsters with them had tried to fortify their defenses while they lit the beacon, lowering a bar across the door and piling rubble against it after they killed the ogre. Despite these efforts she did not think the door would hold long.

She did not think they would make it, either. The only way out of this mess was to leap from the edge of the tower to their deaths, or to fight their way back down through the advancing waves. They had done their duty, lighting the beacon, and if all went as planned Loghain’s armies were flanking the darkspawn on the field. But nothing could be done about the tower.

“I never thought I’d die fighting side by side with a shem,” she said to Alistair, after their burst of mutual, grim laughter. The acknowledgement that they  _ would  _ die was in that laughter. The relief that they had succeeded made them giddy at first, followed fast by the realization that they were now trapped.

He smiled at her words. “I’m sorry you’ll never get to see me dance the Remigold,” he said.

The door gave way and the darkspawn poured in. They flattened the tower guard and cut down the mage.

She did not know what madness overtook her in that moment, but before Alistair could run into battle, she grabbed at his armor and pulled herself up to her tiptoes and kissed him.

No, she knew what the madness was.

She was going to die, finally. There was no way they could live through this. And she had never kissed Tamlen, not once. She’d been working up the courage. She’d thought to do it that day, when they were alone together in the forest… and now she gave Alistair the kiss she had been saving for Tamlen.

He looked shocked, but there was no time for either of them to process what she had done.

The darkspawn archers shot her full of arrows, and she fell, and she knew darkness, and she thought that was the end.

She dreamt that she was held in the bosom of Mythal, who was to carry her away into the sky, far past the moon, into the Beyond.

Her vallaslin honored Mythal, and so it was the All-Mother who gathered her into her arms and said, in a voice older than the trees and the sky, “You’re not done fighting, yet, child.”

The next time she opened her eyes, it was not Mythal or the blessed spirits of the Beyond she saw, but Morrigan, the wood’s witch, and the inside of a hut.

For the third time in recent memory, she awoke from a sickened stupor to find herself being cared for. First, it had been Keeper Marethari, then after the Joining it had been Alistair, and now it was Morrigan. Or, as Morrigan claimed, it had been her mother who had nursed the dying wardens back to life.

Morrigan could not, or would not, answer her as to how they had gotten all the way from the top of the Tower of Ishal to the hut deep in the wilds. She gave a succinct summary of the debacle that had been the Battle of Ostagar, describing Loghain’s treachery as if it were something the shemlen did to each other all the time. And maybe it was.

“Your friend is not taking it well,” she said.

“My… friend?” Lythra asked, her mind still fuzzy. She immediately thought of Tamlen, but he was long gone, and she felt foolish an instant later. “You mean Alistair?”

“Yes, the suspicious, dim-witted one.”

Lythra got out of bed, shocked at how easy it was. There was no hint that she had been riddled with arrows. Morrigan’s mother was a healer surpassing even Keeper Marethari’s skill. She felt heretical to even think such a thought. It was a betrayal to the Dalish to think a shemlen mage could outpace one of their own. And yet here she was.

Alistair looked none the worse for wear, either, though his armor had seen better days. The splint mail he wore was torn and dented, looking as if it should be worn by a dead man, but he was very much alive. His face was puffy and his eyes red, as if he’d been crying. He seemed overjoyed to see her, and his voice cracked when he said that everyone else was dead: Duncan, Cailan, all the Grey Wardens… everyone but them. Everyone but them, and Loghain, and Loghain’s army.

Everything passed in a whirlwind after that. Flemeth, Morrigan’s mother, talked strategy in her whimsical woodsy way, leading them along the path of realizing they had the Warden treaties and were not so helpless as they felt. When Lythra had objected to being even considered a Warden, not like Alistair was, he said, “By the Maker, I’ve lost everyone. Don’t you go abandoning me now.”

“I wasn’t going to abandon you,” she said, twitching, uncomfortable by the intensity with which he said it. “But you’re the only real Warden left. I’m barely even a recruit.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, child,” said Flemeth. “What do you imagine a Grey Warden is?”

“If you’re not a real Warden then neither am I,” Alistair said.

“Fine,” she relented. “But I don’t see how just the two of us are going to make it out of the wilds and build up an army with just some ancient scrolls.”

“That’s where Eamon can help us,” offered Alistair, hopefully. “We can go to him first, get his support.”

She narrowed her eyes dubiously. She didn’t know anything about this so-called “Arl,” this human lord Alistair deemed honorable. Hadn’t Loghain been considered one of the most honorable of all the shem? That’s what everyone had said before the battle. The Hero of the River Dane, the leader of the Night Elves, a forward thinking man who had saved Ferelden from the Orlesian empire alongside their beloved King.

“And I can offer you some help, as well,” said Flemeth, just as Morrigan emerged from the hut.

The younger witch announced that the stew was bubbling and gave Lythra and Alistair a cursory glance before asking if they were staying to supper.

When they left the wilds, it was with Morrigan in tow. Lythra was glad of it, for she did not know if she could take being alone with Alistair at that point.

His grief over Duncan and the King was hard to endure. She did not mock him outright, but his quiet weeping and mournful sighs made her wish she was among those he had lost at Ostagar. She could understand his grief, after all she had lost Tamlen and been torn from her clan. But the way he gave himself over to his sadness, not even trying to hide it, made her skin itch.

Lythra had not yet found tears for Tamlen, the elf she had loved all her life and had seen by her side in her dreams for the future. That Alistair could weep so openly for Duncan, a man he had met just six months previous, confounded her. She kept this to herself, though. There was no point in being cruel to the shem, now that he was the closest thing she had to a clan.

She hoped he might forget her ill-timed kiss.

But he did not.

They trudged through the wilds for the whole day, following Morrigan’s lead to get through the treacherous wilderness as quickly as possible, while also relying on their uncanny Grey Warden sense to avoid the darkspawn that still roamed the swamps. But eventually the sky became too dark to go on, and they made camp in the shelter of a rocky outcropping. The curve of the stone provided enough shelter to risk a small fire, for warmth, and the three of them huddled around it, eating strips of cured meat that Morrigan had packed.

Lythra filled the silence by asking Morrigan questions about the wilds, the Chasind tribes, her life growing up with Flemeth, and her skills as a shapeshifter. The witch answered her questions with patience, and returned her queries with curiosity about the Dalish and their ways. Morrigan was not half bad for a shem, really. Lythra felt more at ease with her than most, and she thought it must have something to do with the fact that they had both led lives of relative seclusion away from shem society, deep in their respective forests.

Alistair was uncharacteristically quiet. All the chattiness that had typified her impression of him before was washed away by his tears for Duncan and his wonder at Loghain’s cowardice and betrayal. Morrigan had little to no patience for his faraway looks and heavy sighs, and she had nothing but cutting remarks to offer when he shared any information about himself. That just made him turn away to utter even more ponderous and maudlin sighs into the darkness.

Eventually, though, Morrigan curled up underneath a fur cloak and went to sleep, leaving the Wardens staring awkwardly at the flickering tongues of fire between them.

Lythra’s hands were busy, carving sticks into sharp arrows. She felt compelled to fill her quiver, even if she did not have the best material to work with. Alistair sat idle for a time, alternating between watching her, and eyeing the slumbering form of Morrigan.

Finally, he said, “So… I was wondering…”

Her hand slipped and she almost sliced her thumb. She paused for a long moment, but said nothing.

“When we were in the tower,” Alisitar continued, “I… I didn’t imagine it, did I? You… you kissed me, right?”

She thought about saying that it was a hallucination brought on by darkspawn blood and too many blows to the head, but instead she just shrugged and said gruffly, “What of it?”

“Well I just wondered what you meant by it. That’s all.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Oh?” He raised one eyebrow. “You go around kissing people all the time, do you? Dalish tradition, is it? It’s certainly not a Grey Warden one. At least not one that Duncan told me about.”

His attempt at levity faltered at the mention of Duncan, and he ducked his head, sighing again.

“Look, I thought we were going to die. It seemed like the thing to do, in the moment,” she explained begrudgingly.

“Oh.”

She stuck a finished arrow in her quiver and reached for another stick to whittle. “Do you really think I could care for a human man?”

He shrugged. “I… I don’t know? I had hoped, maybe…”

“Put that thought out of your mind,” she told him. “Forget about the kiss. I regret it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lead you on, I really thought we’d be dead.”

“We would be, if it wasn’t for Morrigan’s mother.”

Morrigan moved slightly at the sound of her name, and Alistair tensed. But the witch just shifted in her sleep and made no indication that she was awake or listening, and he relaxed again.

“Anyway, I’m the one whose sorry. I shouldn’t have presumed anything.”

“It’s fine. I’m glad we had this talk. Better to set things straight now than let it fester in your mind.”

“Yeah…”

“Let’s concentrate on the Blight, alright? And don’t get any notions about being sad when I die.”

“I hope you can still consider me as a friend?”

“We’re Wardens. Probably the only two left in Ferelden. I think that’s enough of a bond without complications of feelings and friendship. Don’t you?”

“I suppose you’re right.” He sounded inconsolably sad, but she steeled herself against it. She did not intend to live much longer, and he already proved to be far too prone to intense attachment. She was just going to be another Duncan, soon enough.

_ That, or he’ll be another Tamlen… _

“You should try to get some sleep,” she told him, dragging her dagger down the length of the branch, shaving away its bark, smoothing its curves into an arrow, straight and true. The shavings fell into the fire, crackling as they burned away. “I’ll stay up and keep watch until I’ve finished making these arrows.”

“Alright,” he agreed, and settled onto the ground, trying to get as comfortable as possible in his splint mail. His eyes trailed to Morrigan again, as if envying her ability to wear whatever she pleased, protected by magic. But then he turned over, putting his back to the fire and to the women.

Lythra, alone with her thoughts, marveled at how far she had come from home, that she felt remorse for hurting the feelings of a shem. If this boy had wandered too close to her clan mere weeks ago she would have shot an arrow through his pretty mouth and laughed as he gurgled out his last bloodied breaths. And here she was, apologizing for kissing him, telling him not to develop feelings for her.

What a difference one blighted mirror made.

Later, they would find out that they were not the only wardens to escape Ostagar with their lives. The next day they would find Korren Tabris hiding from darkspawn with a mabari hound, and Lythra was sure it was the same mabari she had muzzled in the kennels at Ostagar.

He told of running from the battle after it went south, and hung his head in shame, as if he had been a deserter. Perhaps he was, in the human way of things, but Lythra did not blame him for escaping the carnage after no victory was possible.

He had fought his way out of the ruins with the help of the hound, and been trying to keep clear of the darkspawn ever since. But his journey had been slow going, as he spent so much time hiding and laying low that he’d barely made any headway out of the wilds by the time they found him.

Now, with four of them and the hound, they were able to fight their way through the small bands of darkspawn they encountered. They still steered well clear of the horde.

“What do you call your mongrel?” Morrigan inquired as they walked.

Korren shrugged, realizing that she was addressing him. “He’s not my dog. I don’t even like mabari.”

The dog yipped, and Lythra said, “He seems to like you. Maybe not all mabari are trained by the shems to eat elves.”

At Morrigan’s questioning eyebrow, Korren said, “I grew up in an alienage. The only time I ever saw mabari was when nobles brought them along to hunt cats, or smaller dogs, or elves.”

The hound barked angrily and then growled low in his throat.

“I think you’ve offended him,” said Morrigan.

“Sorry,” Korren said. “You’re clearly nothing like them.”

The dog barked once, appeased.

“Still, I don’t know his name.”

“We’ll have to give him one,” said Alistair, thoughtfully. “Or I suppose we could just call him Dog…”

That got a decidedly ruffled  _ woof. _

“Tis rather presumptuous to name a creature which already possesses one,” said Morrigan.

“Well if he starts speaking and tells you his name, let me know,” Alistair shot back sarcastically. “Actually, can’t you turn into anything you want? Become a mabari and ask him.”

Morrigan leveled a withering glare at him. “Tis not how my magic works, Alistair. I cannot speak to animals, as they have no language.”

“He seems to understand us just fine. Maybe he’s smarter than you give him credit for. Like me.”

“Oh, that the dog is smarter than  _ you _ I have no doubt,” she retorted. “Still, twould not work. Do not pester me thus.”

“We don’t know his name, but perhaps he’ll let us give him a new one,” Lythra said, mostly to end Alistair and Morrigan’s bickering. “What do you think, Dog, do you like that idea?”

She was rewarded with a happy bark.

“Good. Then, growl if you don’t like a name and bark if you do.”

The hound pranced, eagerly, and she could not help but smile.

They each took turns trying out names, ranging from the stately to the silly, but the hound rejected every one, until Alistair said, “He’s going to wear out his growler soon, then he won’t be able to warn us when there’s darkspawn nearby.”

“I thought you Grey Wardens knew when darkspawn were nearby,” Morrigan said, apparently unable to resist needling at everything Alistair said.

“He’s a Grey Warden, too,” said Alistair. “He’s swallowed darkspawn blood and lived, that’s all you really need… though I shouldn’t be telling  _ you _ that.”

“Oh no, now I know all the deepest darkest Warden secrets,” Morrigan crowed, throwing her hands up in the air dramatically. “I suppose you will have to kill me to keep my silence.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Stop it, you two,” said Korren. “I’m starting to miss being alone with just the dog and the hordes of marauding darkspawn.”

The dog lifted its head and barked sharply.

“Oh, now you bark,” said Alistair. “He’d didn’t even say a name. Wait—” He stiffened and looked off into the distance. At that moment Lythra felt it too, the curious buzzing in her head, a sixth sense that tickled her skull.

“Darkspawn ahead,” she said, grimly, and they readied for a skirmish.

A band of hurlocks were marching up ahead, sweeping the road for travelers, and soon they were engaged in battle. Lythra let loose a storm of her freshly carved arrows, Morrigan unleashed her magic, Alistair and the dog both charged forward heedlessly into the thick of the fray, and Korren rolled across the ground in a deft maneuver that allowed him to get behind a creature that had been charging straight at him moments before. He sliced twin blades down the hurlock’s spine, twisting with a satisfying crunch.

It was over in a matter of minutes, and Lythra rifled through the bodies, retrieving her precious arrows.

“Well, at least you still bark for darkspawn,” said Alistair, fondly rubbing down the thick mabari hide and scratching behind the hound’s stubby little ears. He laughed suddenly and said, “Barkspawn.”

The dog woofed happily and threw his body fully into Alistair’s pets, and the shem rolled his eyes even while laughing still. “Oh you like that one, do you? Barkspawn?” He thumped the dog’s side like a drum, and it was settled. The hound had a name, and Alistair had a new best friend.

It was good, Lythra thought. He had the sort of personality that craved friendship, needed a bond. And he could not look for that friendship in her.

It was easier and easier to avoid Alistair the more stragglers they picked up. They found several of the other Grey Wardens hiding out in Lothering, along with other unlikely allies, and Lythra kept more and more to herself the more people there were to be around.

Korren Tabris, and one of the mages, Nelmirea Surana, were both elves, but they were not like her. Not Dalish. They knew the city and the circle, but not the deep, untamed forest. She was a part of the Grey Warden clan, it was true, but she could not allow herself to be tempted by this new life.

Tamlen still waited for her in the Beyond. She would be with him again soon, and she did not want these Wardens to miss her, or to mourn her. She did her duty, always, and always had their backs in a battle, but in the evenings when they made camp she kept to herself.

If she talked to anyone, it was mostly to Morrigan, who also preferred to keep herself apart from the others, setting up her tent far to the edge of camp and building her own fire away from the center. Morrigan felt more familiar than anyone else, again because of her wilderness upbringing, but also because she liked to listen to anything Lythra had to share about her people.

At first she felt like it was wrong to reveal Dalish lore to the shem witch, especially as she was the daughter of the one known to the people as the Asha'bellanar, but then she asked herself, why not? The ways of the elves must be spread out into the world so that they would not die. So she told Morrigan stories she had been taught by Paivel and talked about the day to day life among the Dalish.

But even Morrigan was not always satisfying company. She drew the attention of the others in camp, especially the human men, and despite her playing coy Lythra could tell that she enjoyed it. She was constantly picking fights with Alistair, unsettled when his attention slipped from her. And then there was the young nobleman they had met in Lothering. Aedan Cousland kept sniffing around Morrigan’s tent and would sit himself down by her fire, ignoring Lythra if she were already there. He displayed an interest in Morrigan’s life, but always found ways to steer the conversation to himself.

Lythra would invariably wander away, bored by the human and his talk of faraway Highever and his desire for vengeance on those who had killed his family. Morrigan was not adverse to his company, though. At first she pretended obliviousness or boredom in response to his flirtatious remarks, but she did not drive him away. Eventually she began to reward him with coy laughter and responses in kind.

Lythra didn’t know what she saw in Aedan, really—besides, perhaps, a handsomish human face. His eyes were a striking green, edging towards blue in brighter light, and he had a strong jawline. He seemed most vain about his full head of black hair that stayed perfectly wavy despite the time they spent roughing it on the road, battling darkspawn and every other horror they encountered.

Of the two human men, Lythra thought Alistair was more interesting, and good-looking, but she squashed down that line of thought. She had avoided him almost completely after they left the wilds.

Every day she kept living was another day she fell farther away from Tamlen. She did not want to die having forgotten him. She did not want to live without him.

It should have been easy to die. Easy to fall in battle. Easy to make an end of herself that was more worthy of her clan than to slit her wrists in the dark of night when everyone else was asleep. She thought about that. She thought about it a lot.

_ I must die with purpose. I must die for something. _

Tamlen would want nothing less. He’d marvel to see her sacrificing herself for the world of the shem, to be so far away from their clan that she did not even know where they had gone. But he would understand. He would understand why she had not yet come to him in the Beyond, why they couldn’t be together. She knew he was waiting for her.

_ “I was hoping that was the case…” _

She clung to the memory of those words, how he had responded with a pleased smile when she admitted that she had wanted to be alone with him. She’d spent so much wasted time wondering if he felt anything special for her, or just saw her as a sister, a fellow hunter. In that smile she had gotten her answer. She should have kissed him right then, but had waited, had savored the moment, had still been shy about it.

The mirror had taken him away from her before she gathered her courage.

_ I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. _

She would find her death in the Blight, she would die with honor, and if there was an afterlife, she would find him. And if there was no afterlife, no Tamlen, at least it would be over, at least she would rest and dream no more.


End file.
